Type in a Title that will appear at the top of the page and click the button to create

Save

Click on the edit page button and begin to add content

Add active links by highlighting the words you want to link and clicking the link (chain) button on the toolbar. If the link is outside the wikispace, click "external" and paste in the URL.

Save

Edit the navigation bar by clicking on the "edit navigation" link at the bottom on the left hand column. Add the title of your page alphabetically in the list. Highlight it and click on the "link" button in the toolbar. The link is within wikispaces and usually has the name of the page put in automatically for you. Click "ok".

Technology Tips to Share:

Need to use Firefox as the web browser. We found last time that there were issues with Safari and Wikispaces.

The floating toolbar may not be visible automatically. If it's not floating, click on the button to make it so.

Having multiple windows open on the browser - one for the Learning Library page and one or more for searching

If the navigation page is edited at the same time by multiple people, it won’t work. It needs to be done one group at a time.

Other Guidelines:

Validate your own sites. In topic groups, look at each site and decide what to keep and how to organize.

Think about an annotation to describe the type of content found in each resource or site. It could be the word "interactive", "multimedia"...

Consider that the audience is both children and teachers. Some pages have a separate teacher space.

It might be important for the students at your school to have a simpler look to the page. Build it to suit the students you are working with. For example: we might need to build a page on space for Grade 3 and a different one for Grade 6 students.

Check sites for readability levels by pasting selections into Word and using the Flesch-Kincaid scale to calculate the level - keeping in mind that this is a ball-park level that counts words, syllables and sentences and doesn't consider context and background knowledge.

Valenza Powerpoint about Pathfinders - The link for this is at the top of the page. She outlines reasons why tl's and teachers should create pathfinders for students and why students should also create pathfinders.

Video - Wiki's as Collaborative Tools - demonstrating the experience of using wikis at Sparta High School, the interaction that can occur between teacher and students and between students and the how wikis create authentic learning.

Tutorial video - This is the tutorial that wikispaces has created to help individuals learn how to use the wiki